The Istanbul Decision

by Nick Carter

  Hawk sighed. "Frankly, I don't know. I do know that Zoshchenko and Maria Morgan have been moved from Tomak to Tashkent, presumably to make them more accessible should a deal be worked out."

  "You 're not seriously suggesting we talk with this man?"

  "Let's get one thing straight, N3. Nothing's changed. If you go into this, you go as an assassin, not a negotiator. The man's to be killed at any cost — any cost. Those orders come from upstairs."

  "Yes, sir."

  "But if there's a chance we can catch him out in the open without having to expose ourselves any further, we're going to have to take it."

  "Where's the meet?"

  "Berlin. A safe house has been arranged just on the east side of the wall."

  "That is his territory, sir."

  "That's right. It's his ball game in his park. Maybe he feels safer that way. When you hit him, you're going to have to get out of there somehow. I know you've managed that before."

  "If he's there, I'll take him out."

  "All right, Carter. Not too confident. We want you coming back from this. In the meantime we're going ahead with the switch in Dijon. I've already arranged to feed Kobelev the fact that Tatiana will be in France. You remember Ned Cassidy?"

  "CIA caseworker in Central America. Instrumental in keeping Castro's influence to a minimum down there."

  "He's going over tomorrow."

  "Defecting, sir?"

  "No. He's going freelance. Selling whatever to the highest bidder. He has the complete file on Tatiana, present physical condition, prognosis, whereabouts, what we plan to do with her, the works. We'll give Kobelev three days to process the information. Then, depending on how things go in Berlin, we'll be ready for him."

  "I guess so, sir."

  "Doubt in your mind, Carter?"

  "Well, sir, it's just that there'll be a couple of days when I won't be around in case something happens to Cynthia."

  "I understand your concern. But it's important to give our target the information on Dijon as soon as possible. If he is thinking of showing up in Berlin, he'll know we've moved her closer to his border, and he'll think we 're coming in good faith."

  "Yes, sir."

  "You're on the early flight out of National. Your tickets are at the desk. Your contact in Berlin is Ronald Kliest, our station head in the area and an expert at getting people back and forth over that wall. He may prove useful."

  Hawk rang off without waiting for a reply, and for a moment Carter sat on the edge of the bed, thinking. Then he quickly put the decoding device away and dressed in wool trousers and a wool sports coat. A bag, always packed, lay under the bed. He brought it out, checked its contents, and added his weapons. When he was ready, he called a cab.

  At the Air France desk at National he traded his ticket for a one-way to New York. At Kennedy he would buy another ticket for a direct flight into Tegel Airport, which is the secondary field across Berlin from the main terminal at Tempelhof. In this way no one, not even Kliest, would know when or where he was coming into town.

  In New York he watched each passenger as the plane loaded for some sign he or she wasn't all he or she pretended to be, but everything seemed innocent and aboveboard. No one made the connection between the Washington flight and the flight to Berlin. And yet still he was wary. He had no wish to go through a repeat of what had happened in Phoenix.

  * * *

  It was late and a light rain was falling when he arrived at Tegel. The customs officials didn't bother opening his bag, choosing instead those of a wealthy, nervous-looking German woman who was standing next to him. If they had bothered, they would have no doubt found the Luger, but it would have been of no great consequence. Carter carried identification as a gun collector, and while a Smith & Wesson or Colt might have stirred suspicion, in Germany there was no reason to explain possession of a Luger.

  He collected his bag and carried it out to the line of waiting taxis. He selected the third in line, got in, and gave the driver Kliest's address.

  Kliest had no doubt met the flight at Tempelhof that had arrived earlier, not found Carter, and returned home. Consequently, he should be there waiting when Carter pulled up.

  After having surveyed the house from the cab, Carter got out a block further down, paid the driver, and went into a small biergarten across the street. He ordered a stein, paid for it, and sat down by the rain-streaked window to watch the house a while longer.

  For more than an hour no one came or went, the only sign of life being a light in the living room window. At ten o'clock this winked out. Carter snuffed out his cigarette, finished the last of his second beer, hoisted his bag, and crossed the street.

  A light rap brought Kliest to the door immediately. "Wer ist da?" he asked suspiciously.

  "Carter."

  "Ach!" he exclaimed, throwing the bolt back and opening the door. "I've been expecting you. I thought there'd been a change of plan."

  "I'm sorry I wasn't at the airport. I had to make sure I wasn't followed," Carter said, stepping inside.

  "Of course. Of course. Let me take that," said Kliest, grabbing the suitcase and standing it by the wall.

  It was a modest home. A hall off the living room apparently led to the bedrooms. To the left behind a counter was the kitchen. A wooden train set on the floor indicated small children, and Carter remembered an entry in Kliest's dossier, something about a son he doted on.

  "How was the flight?"

  "Quiet."

  "Sit down. Sit down." Kliest indicated a leather armchair, and Carter eased himself into it. "I'm sorry my wife isn't up. She very much wanted to meet you."

  "Maybe it's just as well. I've a lot of work ahead of me tonight. Hawk tells me you're pretty good at getting people back and forth across the border."

  Kliest shrugged in a self-deprecating way. His glasses and balding head made him look like a slightly-less-than-successful businessman, and the gesture suited him. "We've had our triumphs. Our setbacks, too."

  "Can you get me across tonight?"

  "Tonight? Ach, no — impossible. The ports of entry are all closed by eight."

  Carter took out a cigarette, then picked up a lighter from the end table and lit it. "That's very disappointing. I was told you could arrange such things."

  "Mein Herr, there is no difficulty getting you into the Eastern Sector. The problem lies in getting you out. As a foreigner, you may enter at either of the two checkpoints with no more man your passport. But your name will be kept on record, and if you do not check in within a specified time, a warrant is issued for your arrest. But this needn't concern us. Everything has been arranged. Here." He reached behind his chair, pulled out a long metal object and handed it to Carter. "What does that look like to you?"

  "A tripod, most likely for a camera, judging from the screw connection at the top."

  "Wrong, my friend. Let me show you." He twisted one of the legs off the stand and pulled it into two pieces along a seam that had been so cleverly made as to be almost invisible. He laid these parts on the floor and began undoing another leg. In less than a minute he had the entire device in pieces on the floor and was reassembling it.

  "I have a workshop downstairs," he explained. "I made this up when I heard you were coming. Fabricating 'tools of the trade' is something of a hobby of mine."

  As the reconstructed object began to take shape, Carter smiled. "It's a rifle," he said.

  Kliest fitted the last of the tripod parts along the stock and handed it to Carter. Carter swung it up quickly and aimed down the tripod leg barrel at the wall. "It even has a certain balance," he said softly.

  "There's more," said Kliest. He fetched a camera from a desk drawer across the room, took the rifle from Carter, and fitted the camera's telephoto lens along a slot that had been discreetly machined in the barrel's top. "Now try it."

  "It's perfect," marveled Carter, sighting a table lamp a few feet away.

  "I have had papers made up identifying you as Wilhelm Schmidt, professio
nal photographer. You can enter the Eastern Sector tomorrow, make your appointment and leave. No one will be the wiser."

  Carter shook his head. "You forget I'm as much the hunted in this as I am the hunter. And the time and the place have been arranged. I have to get over there tonight to take advantage of what little element of surprise I have left."

  "And how will you get out? You'll have to go over the wall."

  "You said you've had some success with that."

  "Some," said Kliest, taking the rifle from Carter and, with an air of disappointment, beginning to dismantle it. "But we had time to prepare, to wait for the right conditions. Sometimes months. I doubt it can be done on such short notice."

  "We'll just have to try. Tell me more about these checkpoints. How many guards are there and how well armed?"

  For the next hour Carter pumped his host for every scrap of information he could ferret out on conditions along the wall — guards' timetables, gun emplacements, minefields, buildings nearby, their contents and accessibility, and at the end of the hour, Carter sat back thoroughly frustrated. "There must be some way over short of creating an international incident," he declared.

  "Mein Herr, some of the best minds in Germany have been trying to crack that nut for more than thirty years. Believe me, the wall is virtually impregnable."

  "I don't believe it," said Carter. "I refuse to believe it." He picked up a section of the tripod gun and rolled it absently in his hand. "Nice piece of work, this," he said. "Why don't you take me downstairs and show me your workshop? Maybe if we get our minds off the problem for a while, a solution will present itself."

  They entered the basement down a stairway from the kitchen. Kliest turned on a series of overhead fluorescents, and Carter was amazed at the number of power tools the man had at his command. 'You must have a small fortune invested down here," he said.

  "You've been talking to my wife," said Kliest. "She's always complaining about the money I spend on my crackpot inventions."

  "What's in there?" Carter asked, indicating with a nod the door on the other side of the room.

  "Materials."

  Carter opened the door and switched on the light. Stacked on shelves and piled in wooden bins were sections of pipe, pieces of various metals, jars of paint, odd chunks of wood.

  "Mostly what's left after I've put something together," said Kliest, peering in over his shoulder.

  "What's this?" Carter asked, pulling something from a lower shelf.

  "A nylon tent someone was throwing away. I haven't found a use for it yet."

  Carter ran his hand over the material. "Lightweight, strong. It gives me an idea, Herr Kliest. Most definitely, an idea."

  Carter led the way into the workshop to a drafting table that stood in a corner. Taking out a pad he made a quick sketch, then pushed it over to Kliest.

  "It could be done," said Kliest, stroking his chin. "It's never been tried, and for that reason it may work. It'll take some time."

  "Tonight?"

  "Yes, tonight."

  Carter stripped off his jacket and the two men set to work. It was after one o'clock by the time they finished.

  "We should test it, of course," Kliest said, wiping his hands with a rag.

  "We haven't the luxury," said Carter. "I'll fold it up and put it in its case. You get the car."

  While they'd been working, Kliest had told Carter of a freight train that ran nightly into the Eastern Sector. It was not inspected because it was assumed no one would want to sneak into East Berlin. On the return trip, however, it was carefully gone over by guards and dogs, and over the years many people had been arrested trying to escape. The train slowed to a comfortable fifteen kilometers per hour under the Spandau Bridge as it steamed around the rail yards at Reinickendorf. The Spandau Bridge was only ten minutes from Kliest's house by car.

  When Kliest returned downstairs, Carter was just finishing. On the floor at his feet lay a cylindrical object seven feet in length and ten inches in diameter covered with a lightweight nylon casing. Attached to either end was a shoulder strap to facilitate carrying.

  The two of them stared down at the cylinder. "I'll bet anything it works," Carter said.

  "You are betting, mein Herr. You are betting your life."

  * * *

  The Spandau Bridge is one of the few in the city to have survived World War IT. Decades of engine smoke have blackened it, and tons of coke dust have settled on it from the iron foundries across the canal. In the drizzling rain it gave off a sulphurous smell.

  Carter looked down at the eighteen sets of tracks gleaming in the yard lights. "How do I know which track the train will come on?" he asked.

  "Numbers eight and ten are through traffic," said Kliest. "All the others are for switching in the yard."

  "Thanks," Carter said, then added, "for everything."

  "Good luck, mein Herr."

  "If you don't hear from me in twenty-four hours, burn my suitcase and everything in it."

  Kliest nodded solemnly. They were standing on the bridge embankment just off the road. Kliest turned and trudged back up toward the car. In the distance a train whistle sounded, accompanied by the faint chattering of wheels against the rail.

  Kliest stopped before reaching the top of the embankment and turned around. "Do you remember the address in the Eastern Sector?" he asked.

  "Fourteen Mariendorfstrasse."

  "And the Brandenburg?"

  "At the end of Unter den Linden. That won't be hard to find."

  Kliest nodded approval. The train was getting closer. "Good luck," he repeated.

  Carter, with the long cylinder dangling from his back, began the arduous, hand-over-hand climb up the girders that formed the underside of the bridge.

  The engine's headlight wobbled in the distance. It had rounded the curve at the far end of the yards and was beginning the straightaway that would bring it under the bridge.

  Carter, watching its progress and realizing he might be late, began to scramble from girder to girder. The metal was wet from the rain and slippery underfoot. Twice the cylinder caught in the metal framework, and he had to stop and wrench it free.

  The big engine passed underneath just as he got himself in place, rattling the bridge and nearly suffocating him with diesel exhaust. A string of boxcars followed with flat, hard roofs slick with rain. He watched them rattle by ten or so feet below and wondered if even fifteen kilometers an hour wasn't too fast. Next came flatcars loaded with farm equipment: tractors with sharp, gleaming plow blades. To fall onto these would mean certain death.

  He looked down the train. Making the corner were a series of gondola cars loaded with coal. He disentangled the cylinder strap and let himself down until he was hanging from the girder by his hands. He let the first one pass, getting his timing on the second, then he let go. He hit the coal mound just below its peak, tumbled down it, and stopped with his back up against the well of the car. He pulled himself upright and took account of things. No bones broken, and the package seemed to be intact. He pulled it close to him, turned his collar up against the wind, and sat back to wait.

  Twenty minutes later he felt the cars grinding to a halt. They had come to an outpost on the track. A barbed-wire barrier ten feet high extended up the embankment on either side, and on the track were a guardhouse and a gate. The gate was open and the train finally stopped just in front of it, no doubt for the guard and the engineer to exchange bills of inventory.

  Ten minutes passed and the train started up again. Carter waited until he was well past the guardhouse, then jettisoned the cylinder and jumped, landing in the tall grass. He ran back and retrieved the cylinder, then scrambled up the embankment to the road.

  He had made it. He was in the Eastern Sector. All that remained now was to find the building in which the meeting with Kobelev was scheduled to take place and scout it out. If Kobelev showed up at the appointed time, he'd kill him. If not and it was a trap, at least he'd know about it in advance.

 
Four

  Sister Marie-Therese kneeled before the crucifix in the chapel of the St. Denis Clinic and mumbled a Hail Mary. It had been a while since she'd prayed, and when she found herself rushing through it, she stopped and chided herself for a lack of piety. It was this new patient on the third floor. The young woman kept her running all day. After the seventh or eighth trip up those stairs, her joints got stiff.

  Supporting herself with a gnarled hand on the altar top, she pulled herself slowly erect, turned, and eased herself into one of the wooden pews behind her. Then with a sigh she sat back and stared at the crucifix, not seeing it really, but fixing on it as the focal point of the room, and let her mind wander. As she did, a look of worry settled over her features.

  What worried her was violence. She sensed it coming to St. Denis just as she had sensed it that day in 42 when the German soldier had come to say a prayer at the grotto in the garden and she'd seen the blood dripping from his coat. St. Denis was a haven then, a showplace convent for well-to-do girls who sought solace from a world that seemed to have lost its mind. The killing and the war were someplace else, in small towns to the south and east whose names were easily forgotten. Here the bells rang out four times a day, morning vespers, meals, and evening prayers, just as they had for centuries. There were smiles, even occasional laughter.

  Then they'd come, their thick boots crusted with mud, streaked with red, dragging their dead and wounded with them, right through the garden, killing the flowers. They set up a hospital in the name of the Reich, and that day the bells had stopped ringing.

  Sister Marie-Therese had been no more than a wide-eyed novice then — a mere girl — and although she had felt the same shame and outrage the others felt when the Germans came, she did not understand the profound sense of loss Mother Superior must have felt when she acquiesced without so much as a word of protest.

  She understood it now, however, and they were coming again, these storm troopers. They wore different uniforms, spoke a different language, but they were the same selfish, unholy men who intruded, defiled, stole peace in a world where peace was on the verge of extinction.